


What's in a name? (El)

by stillusesapencil



Series: an aching kind of growing [6]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Poetic Language, References to PTSD, deep thoughts on relationships, found family trope, i used way too many em dashes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 19:18:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18762799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillusesapencil/pseuds/stillusesapencil
Summary: The name on her adoption certificate is Jane Eleanor Hopper. Eleven was just too weird of a middle name to slide past the government, so Eleanor it was. But she knows, just as they all do, that it’s Eleven, El, and sometimes, Ellie.





	What's in a name? (El)

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! The last piece of my series! I've worked really hard on it, I hope you like it.

Her name is 011, and she lives in a concrete box with her Papa. There are other children, named 008, 009, 005. Sometimes she sees them. Sometimes she doesn’t. She learns; how to move things with her mind; how to move people with her mind; how to go to the black place with the water on the ground; how to care for a nosebleed. And if she didn’t do right, her Papa would put her in the concrete room by herself. It was correct that she should be punished if she couldn’t do what he wanted. That’s what fathers did, and he did it because he loved her. 

And she is happy.

(Happiness is situational. Happiness is the emotion felt in specific places at specific times. So she may have been happy, but she had no joy. And joy is the far better emotion. For joy, joy is felt in the soul, not the place. Happiness is situation. Joy is spiritual.)

Papa makes her hurt things—she smashes people to the walls, and he is pleased with her. But Papa loves her. So she will do what he asks. 

(So, this was how love worked. He commands, she obeys, he loves. Love is conditional. Love depends on her obeying. Love can go away.)

He asked her to listen to people—across the lab, across the town, across the world. And she does. She does her best.

But there is a monster. A monster who wants to hurt her. A monster who scares her. 

Papa didn’t understand. Papa wanted her to talk to the monster. She didn’t like that, but she did it because she loved him. And if she loved him, she would obey.

It is her fault the monster gets through. It is her fault that people die. It is her fault, her fault, Papa will not love her anymore and the bad men are coming, and she runs, runs away, escapes—

She doesn’t know what to do or where to go, only that she is being chased and that she doesn’t want to go back to the concrete rooms. The bad men are coming. 

Her name is 011, and she is in the woods in the rain, and there is a boy. 

The boy’s name is Mike, and he and his friends take her home. There is something intangibly _good_ about this boy, something that tells her he won’t hurt her or let the bad men get her. She’s never met a person like him in her life ever before. 

He spends a day with her, slowing her a big soft chair that unfolds, and offering her things she doesn’t quiet understand. Everything is softer and quieter than she’s every known before. She smiles—a foreign expression to her, it pulls on her cheeks and lips in a way that doesn’t quite feel familiar yet—and Mike smiles in return. 

And then she sees the picture of Will. She recognizes him right away—she saw him before, in the place with the monster. 

Mike wants to know because he cares about this boy, and it’s written all over his face how deeply he cares—but then his mother comes and he tries to put her in the closet. Fear electrifies her, she can’t breathe right and a thousand images of the bad men coming for this boy run through her mind. 

“I won’t tell her about you, I promise.”

There’s something in the way he says that word—promise—that she knows it’s important, deeply important. “Promise?”

“It means something that you can’t break. Ever.” 

And suddenly she is in the dark, and she can’t breathe right, and he’s never coming back, he’s never coming back, she is alone in the dark box. She sinks to the ground, hugging her knees. She’s alone. Her breath comes in quick little gasps and she begins to cry.

And then Mike opens the door. “Is everything okay?”

“Mike.” She nods. _Promise._ This is the first time a promise has been kept, like this. Sometimes Papa had promised (no more, last time, no hurting) and he had lied. This boy told the truth. This boy is good. 

Her name is Eleven, and if she knows nothing else right now, it’s that this boy is her safety and her salvation.

Mike’s friends come back, and they ask her about Will. Lucas wants to tell Mike’s parents, but he can’t, she knows he can’t, and so she shuts the door. 

“Oh my god,” the toothless boy lisps. “She’s like Yoda!”

Later, they ask her to find their friend, another word she doesn’t know.

Mike tells her, “A friend is someone you’d do anything for.”

Friend. She rolls is over in her mind. Friend. This boy, Mike, is her friend. She knows that now. She’d do anything for him, and she’d tell him things. Friend. 

She uses the things nearby—a monster figure, a black square of cardboard (later she learns it’s called a “gameboard”). It takes time, but they form a plan. “Operation Mirkwood,” they call it. 

It turns out there’s a lot of words she doesn’t know. 

Will is in the Byer’s house. She knows this, she saw him there, but he’s not there, not where they can see him, and she can’t explain it. There is too much, and it frustrates her and it scares her. She can’t do what they ask—will they still want her? 

When they pull the body out of the quarry, Mike is hurt. El lied to him, he says, and friends don’t lie. But she didn’t lie. It hurts, that he doesn’t love her anymore, because he thinks she lied. She’s afraid he’ll hurt her, like Papa, but he doesn’t. He leaves. 

She follows him, and shows them she didn’t lie, through his voice on the radio. And they are friends again and it’s good again. She wants it to remain this way, because she likes them, but mostly because she likes Mike. 

So when Lucas tries to touch Mike, she throws him away. And this, apparently, was the wrong thing to do because Mike gets angry, yelling. Like Papa. So she runs away. 

She wants to cry. 

When she finds them on the quarry, it doesn’t matter what has happened in the past, that he yelled, that she ran—what matters is that they are in danger, and she needs to help them. 

Later, looking back, she thinks maybe she shouldn’t have broken the boy’s arm. But in the moment, it was the right thing to do. 

She caught Mike. She saved him.

She saved Dustin, too. (That’s important, she’ll learn later. Dustin is important. He doesn’t always know it, but he is.)

She’s not a monster. She’s a hero.

And they love her. They love her because she saved them and because she’s their friend and because she is a person. She didn’t have to do anything for them to love her. They just do.

Her name is El, and she has friends. 

They put her underwater and ask her to find Will. There is a lady, with worried eyes and soft hands, who promises to be right there the whole time. Something warm swells in El’s chest then—later she will call it comfort—but she believes this woman (Joyce, mother, friend). It’s so different from Papa. 

She finds the boy, shivering but brave. And so begins the end. 

They fight a monster. Well, she fights a monster, and they back her up. 

And there is a moment. She knows. 

She knows, that she will die, or the monster will take her, or she will be banished to the upside down. She knows this, but her decision is made. For Mike. For Dustin and Lucas and Joyce. And Will. 

She will still sacrifice for them. 

Her vision clouds red. There are flakes around her, and she smells decay.

“Goodbye, Mike,” she whispers, and then the monster explodes and the portal opens and she is falling, falling, gone, dying, coughing, breathing—

She wakes on a quiet cold flaky forest floor. The school is nearby, so she runs back in, pushing through the wall and into the silent halls. 

First, to find Mike. 

Once she goes back to Mike’s house, there are bad men crawling everywhere, and when she peers in the window, she knows it’s not safe for her or Mike. For Mike’s sake, she leaves, heading into the woods. 

Survival is the goal now. Just make it to the next day. She makes good use of her powers—killing animals to eat and such. There is a cold ruthlessness in her at times like these, when she is reduced to survival and violence. 

Hopper finds her eventually. He is a big man, like Papa, yet not at all like Papa. His voice is quieter, softer; his hands are gentler, and he loves her. 

(So this is how love works. It is not a give and take, but it is an exchange. It goes both ways.)

They live in a cabin in the woods, making a list of “don’t be stupid” rules. Dinner first, then dessert. Always signal if you’ll be late. Don’t let people see you. Don’t open the door unless the knock is right.

Hopper—big and hairy and awkward—teaches her to tell time (eight-one-five? no, eight-fifteen), gives her the basics of math, and brings her basic books to read. The cabin is small and dark, but it’s her home. She watches TV and learns new words, and she only eats Eggos if she’s sad. They remind her of Mike.

Every night she visits Mike when he calls her on the radio, but he always has to dissolve in smoke. The biggest “don’t be stupid” rule is that no one can see her. Not yet, it’s not safe. 

She wants things—to not eat peas, because they are mushy and gross—to go outside, because the cabin is boring—to watch TV so that the characters can be happy—but most of all, she wants to see Mike. She wants to see Mike, and Dustin and Lucas. And Will, too, but she’s never met him before. 

But not yet. That’s stupid. And they are not stupid. 

Time crawls. Soon, it is fall again, rainy and dead, just like when she first escaped. On Halloween, she begs to be let out, and it is still stupid. Not yet. 

Always not yet. 

Deep anger like she has not known before swells within her, and she screams, breaking every pane of glass and slamming the door. Immediately it is replaced by fear—what if Hopper gets angry? What if he hurts her for what she’s done?

And yet. He doesn’t. There is no anger, and he doesn’t come crashing in, threatening. 

Maybe he’s just trying his best. Just like her. 

El forms a connection to Terry—her mother. _Mother_. What a foreign word to turn over on her tongue. She has never had a mother. So she sets off to find her. 

_Mother._

She breaks every “don’t be stupid” rule they have, packs up, and leaves. 

It takes time, traveling and hitchhiking, keeping her face schooled so people will leave her alone. She doesn’t care about them and they don’t care about her. They don’t matter. What matters is finding mother. 

But her mother is broken, not like a mother should be at all, not like the mother’s she’s seen on television or even something like Hopper. She’s silent and staring, her brain like static. 

There is Becky, though-- _aunt_ \--she learns, another new word, and Becky gives her a folder full of papers. And on one of the papers is a brown girl that El recognizes from her visions.

So she heads out onto the road again, this time to Chicago.

Chicago is the biggest city El has ever seen. The buildings are tall and there are people, people everywhere, pressing close and bouncing her all over the sidewalk. They don’t pay any attention to a shaggy-haired girl walking down the street alone.

She will not be alone for long.

She finds them in an abandoned building, its walls covered with bright painted graffiti. They are tall, skinny-limbed, and something vicious lurks in their eyes. If El didn’t know that she could smash their skulls in with a blink, she would run away. 

She sees them, sees the way they look out of the corners of their eyes and hold fear between their shoulder blades and confidence like a shield in front of them, and decides she can play that game too. She straightens, looks Axel dead in the eye and refuses to cower in front of his knife. 

When Kali comes down the steps and looks at her, El knows something is clicking into place. She proves herself by stealing Axel’s knife right out from under his fingertips and folding it carefully to hand back to Kali.

“I saw you. In the rainbow room.” 

“What is your name?” Kali asks.

“Jane,” El says, and it slides off her tongue without stutter. 

Kali’s eyes are deep and warm, and she holds El’s tattooed wrist beside her own and says, “Sister.” 

Kali takes her to the roof and shows her an iridescent butterfly and says, “What you can do, Jane, is incredible. You shouldn’t have to hide it.” 

El nods. She doesn’t want to hide it. She wants to be incredible. She bats at the butterfly, smiles with only the corner of her mouth, and asks, “Are you real?”

Kali nods. “Yes, I’m real.”

El pokes her finger into Kali’s cheek until the older girl smiles. 

This is what it is like to have siblings. This is what it is like to have a family. Families protect you and love you just as you are. You don’t have to hide from family. You make them laugh and they make you smile and together you are a team.

Her name is Jane, and she has joined Kali’s warriors. 

Their little band adopts her immediately, like she’s their little sister, like she’s a part of the family. They take her in and accept her gifts in a way that feels right. It’s another Party, she thinks.

There’s Gunshine—big and wide, like Hopper. He looks scary, but he calls her “Miss Jane,” and his voice is gentle.

There’s Mick—with big hair and an easy smile. She has kindness in the crinkles around her eyes, even as anger lurks in the set of her wrists as she grips the wheel of their van.

Dottie, hair bright and colorful, chews her gun incessantly and giggles sharply. She seems crazy, but she is astute and quick with comebacks.

Axel is the most annoying. He is full of anger at the world that kicked him to the curb, and he never seems sure where to send it. To his enemies, sure, to his friends, sometimes. He hates spiders, and he’s none too fond of El, but he is unfailingly, relentlessly loyal to Kali. 

They all are. Gunshine talks about how she saved them, that they would be dead without her. They all turn to her voice and trust her with every beat of their hearts. This is not like the Party, El decides, where everyone was equal and they negotiate. Kali makes the decisions here, and they all nod and do as she says. The world has not been kind to them, and has beat them down, kicked them again, and laughed in the face of their pain. They have reasons to be angry. 

So does El.

“I’m a fighter,” she declares, and brings the ruthlessness that she carries within her to the surface. “I’ve killed.”

Kali likes her fire and her burning anger. She encourages El’s viciousness, proudly applauding the destruction she causes out of anger. 

Together they decide to give El a baby-faced mask to match the rest of them. Each mask says something about the person underneath. In a way, it’s not really a mask but a bald-faced reveal of true character. Kali and Dottie help her do her hair and makeup, giving her a brand new bitchin’ look. It makes El feel older and tougher. She fits right in with their little scrappy crew. 

They raid a grocery store, and El grabs boxes of Eggos. She shouldn’t really, she needs real food, but there is something familiar and comforting in the yellow packaging and fluffy waffles within. They have seen her through many hard times—her first days out of the lab, the days when Hopper was late and worried her. They were the first food Mike had fed her, and every time, it brings her comfort. 

Despite the strength she willingly displays and the enjoyment she gets while doing so, she still reaches for that bit of comfort. 

They finally track down Ray, the man who hurt Mama, and break into his apartment. Gunshine stands guard, broad as the walkway, arms crossed over his broad chest. Dottie pulls Axel away to get things like money and prescription meds to get them high. 

Kali shows Ray the true horror of what he has done, the two children he hurt. They were no bigger than his girls are now, really.

Perhaps that is what stops El. 

She sees the photo of the children, the two sisters, like her and Kali, and she can’t bring herself to do it. She simply cannot. She has killed before, snapped necks with a nod of her head, but it is an entirely different thing to stare a man in the eyes and watch the life drain from his face. 

She can’t do it, and she doesn’t let Kali do it either. She throws the gun out the window, meeting Kali’s stunned gaze. No one has ever stood up to Kali like that, she guesses, all of them are unfailingly loyal. El was supposed to be the lieutenant to Kali’s captain, and now she has mutinied. 

They escape by the skin of their teeth, and El is shaken. Back at their hideout, she takes her flannel and holds it close to her chest. It was Hopper’s flannel before hers, and he passed it on. He didn’t have any girl’s clothes on hand, and El didn’t really know any different. Her previous fashion experience had been limited to drab uniforms, hospital gowns, and the Wheeler’s hand-me-downs. 

Holding the soft flannel, she clothes her eyes and reaches for Hopper. 

He stands in the void, hands on his hips and shouts. Something about a graveyard.

Suddenly, Mike is there. He is running, frantic and afraid, shouting in distress. _A trap, it’s a trap!_

“Mike!” she shrieks, hoping somehow, magically, he’ll hear her. “ _Mike!_ ”

He dissolves into smoke. 

She snaps her eyes open, panting and sweating. Panic and worry surge in her chest. 

_Mike._

Mike is in danger. Her Mike. Her friend. Her love.

Kali grabs her shoulder, whispering urgently, “We have to go.” 

They hurry out of the building as police storm in. Kali climbs into the van and motions for her to follow, but El shakes her head. 

“My friends—they’re in danger.”

“They cannot save you,” Kali says.

“I know. But I can save them.”

Kali’s eyes fill with tears, and El’s do too. They take one last look at each other and the decision is made. 

Mick slams on the gas and El sprints away, tears spilling down her cheeks. Kali is family, but Mike is _hers._

It’s time to save her friends. It’s time to see Mike.

It’s time to go home. 

She hitchhikes, keeping to herself mostly. Most people in this world have goodness in them somewhere, and if they don’t, El can take care of herself. 

Once back in Hawkins, she sprints from place to place, trying to figure out where her friends are. When she finds them, it’s just in time. She kills the demidogs circling the house, undoes the latch with her mind, and steps through the door.

And there is Mike. 

Within her chest, the pieces of her heart start to knit back together. It hurts, but in a good way. 

She reaches her arms to Mike and they hold each other close, their hearts beating against each other, in sync with each other, together and solid and real, _finally._ Mike, in a sudden fit of anger wheels on Hopper, and El lets him. She’s still angry at Hopper, too.

Dustin and Lucas reach for her, and Dustin has teeth, which he hadn’t before. And there’s the girl that she’d seen before. She ignores her. Mike was hers, not this girl’s. 

When it comes time to close the gate, she pulls Mike onto the porch. She has just returned to him and now she must leave again. She doesn’t know if she’ll come back. 

“Mike…” she whispers, and tilts to kiss him, but Hopper clears his throat. 

Later. If there is a later. 

When it comes time to close it gate, it takes all of her strength. She has to pull on that ruthlessness that resides deep in her core, and push it out, out of her hands to close the gate. She remembers Kali, and draws on the anger from all her trauma. 

She thinks of Papa. 

She thinks of the experiments and the death and the bloody noses. 

_The gate is closing._

She thinks of crushed coke cans and broken promises and the silence of the Void. 

Rage burns within her, and blood pours hot out of her ears and nose.

_The gate closes more._

She levitates off the ground and she _screams_ , throat burning raw and hot. 

All the anger is not enough. She thinks of Mike. 

She thinks of Mike and all the messages he sent for three hundred fifty three days. She remembers the number of times she saw him weep because he missed her. She thinks of his smile and his bravery and the look on his face when she walked through the door. 

_Mike Mike Mike._

She loves him. She _loves_ him. And that is what it takes to close the gate. 

She slumps, exhausted, into Hopper’s arms. 

After the battle, she leans on Mike’s shoulder, fingers wound together. Will is back from the upside down, though they haven’t met officially, and Dustin and Lucas and Max are congregated with Steve as Hopper talks to the official-looking government men that are swarming the Byers’ house. 

They don’t say anything, just sit. Sometimes, there is no need for words. Just the exhaustion and euphoria of escaping destruction. 

Mike presses a slow kiss to the top of her head and breathes out gently. 

“I missed you,” he says, though it has already been said three hundred fifty three other times. 

“I missed you, too,” she whispers back.

(So, this is how love works. Love is longing. Love is sticking by the others’ side through all hell. Love is the space at her side when she is away from Mike. Love is powerful. Love brought her home.)

Her name is El, and she has returned home to live with her friends.

Three days after they banish the mind flayer, Will wakes up from his possession-induced exhaustion, and they get to see him. El is the last one into the room, and when she sees him, she feels like she has known him all her life. 

For a long time they just hold each other and cry. 

“I watched you in the Upside Down. You were very brave.” It’s all she can think to say to him, this boy who has survived his own personal hell. 

It’s the beginning of the relationship that will become her best friend. 

She goes back to the cabin with Hopper, but not alone, not anymore. They can have friends over now, and sometimes she can go out with them. They repair what has been broken, rebuild their trust, and one day, she calls him “Dad.”

It happens like this. They sit down to dinner, and she starts to eat her peas, and then she says, “Can you pass the salt…Dad?” She trips over the word and it comes out a bit strangled, but it’s out there.

For a minute, he stares at her, and then he slides the salt shaker across to her. “Sure…Ellie.” 

She smiles with the corner of her mouth, and they carry on.

In December, Hopper offers her a gift. He gets Joyce to find her a dress, and she borrows Nancy’s Wheeler’s makeup. She puts it on just like Kali showed her, and thinks of her sister quietly, with a small pang in her heart. 

It’s a bit overwhelming, the people, the noise, the decorations, but there is Mike. He hadn’t known she was coming. 

She doesn’t know how to dance, but it’s okay. They figure it out together. 

Hopper starts teaching her school more, getting Joyce to help. El starts learning math, and is making her way through history. Dustin and Lucas start teaching her science, as best they can, brining basic experiments like “put a bean in dirt in a cup and see what happens” and “build a battery out of pennies” and “put baking soda in vinegar and watch it make a mess.” (Hopper gives them a talking-to after the last one.) They don’t come every day, and not every time they come is for science, but they seem to enjoy it. 

El reads voraciously, a quick study. What was fumbling though “The cat in the hat” is now whizzing through “The Indian in the Cupboard,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Tom Sawyer.” When Hopper runs out of books, he comes to Joyce, and she gives him “Anne of Green Gables,” “The Little Princess,” “Pippi Longstocking,” and the entire Little House series. Hopper gets the distinct impression that Joyce has been waiting for a long time to share her books with a little girl. Will, though blessed with a love of reading, was more likely to read something like “A Wrinkle in Time.” He eventually loans his copy to El, and she promises to keep it safe for him. Steve sends her comic books (X-men, with Jean Grey, and Teen Titans, with Raven) and Lucas introduces her to the complete works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Mike writes her stories, and they read them together on Hopper’s couch. 

Mike comes over a lot, just to be with her. Every time, he greets her with a kiss on the forehead. He gives a special knock on the door, and she unlocks it for him, and then they do homework together, or watch soap operas, or watch movies that Mike insists she see. Sometimes they kiss. Sometimes they don’t. Hopper comes home to see them sitting on the couch and will give Mike a stern look, but there is a fragile peace between them. 

They go over to the Byers’ a lot. Joyce and Hopper love each other. That much El can see. But they aren’t doing anything about it, not like characters in books. They’ll figure it out on their own time. Until then, El gets to hang out with Will. 

She loves to watch him draw. He draws all of their party, in beautiful crayon color, and she loves every single one. 

He draws her, big brown eyes and curly hair, in the oversized blue flannel that she likes the best. “Pretty,” she declares, and tapes it to her wall.

Sometimes Will helps her with her homework, patiently walking her through the numbers. Numbers are nice. They are reliable, and always come out the same. 

Will introduces her to music. They lie on his bed and he plays tape after tape, asking her which ones she likes best. She’s heard music before—piano, mostly, without notes, but this is so wonderfully different. There’s so many instruments making so many different sounds, and people sing. She learns the words to sing along, and Will sings with her. 

When they do homework, one of them will start singing, and the other will join—softly at first, then building until they are playing air drums and guitar on their pencils. 

Will builds her a blanket fort, almost like the one Mike made, draping a blanket from his bed over the backs of chairs. Tucked together safely like that, they giggle and swap secrets. Sometimes the secrets are harmless—El tells him about a surprise dinner she’s going to cook for Hopper, and Will tells her about the mixtape he’s making for Jonathan’s birthday. Sometimes they are not so harmless—memories of places to which they’d rather not return. 

They listen as their parents toe the line of a relationship. 

“Dad really cares for your mom,” El offers.

“Yeah,” Will says. “I’m glad. She needs someone like that, y’know?”

“What is your…father like?” El asks, and Will tenses beside her. “Is he like Papa?” she whispers.

Will shakes his head. “Not…like your papa. He was…” Will tips his head back until it touches the wall. “He was not kind. He yelled. He tore down my drawings. He hit mom a few times. He drank. Once he made Jonathan go hunting and said Jonathan would never be a man. He lives in a different town now.”

El curls into his side. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. He’s gone now, right?”

“And if he ever comes back…” she leaves the sentence hanging, but Will gets the idea. Ruthlessness still resides within her. It is hers to command to protect the people she loves.

Mike gets her to come over and play D&D. He helps her roll up a character (a mage, of course, he says, it has to be a mage), and Dustin sits beside her to help her play. Max is there, too, and she’s playing as a rogue. The game goes slowly, with two new people, but it’s fun. El has a feeling they’ll be playing it a lot more. 

Max is one of the Party, now, too, just like El. Lucas and Mike scheme together and have them come over for a game of monopoly. Erica Sinclair interrupts them at least ten times, and she sasses all of them, and makes El laugh. By the time the game is over, Max and El are friends. 

Max is not her replacement. She’s just another friend.

They hang out with the boys, mostly, through the winter, but when spring starts coming, they get together with Nancy for a little “girl time.” Nancy rolls her eyes at the title it was given by Mrs. Wheeler, but she drives them to get lunch and to do a little shopping. El buys herself short yellow overalls, because they are happy looking. Nancy and Max coo over them and tell her how pretty she looks, and El smiles brightly. 

This is the first of many “girls days.” Sometimes Holly Wheeler joins them. Nancy teaches the younger girls how to do makeup. It’s different from what Kali showed El, but it looks wonderful. Max paints El’s nails for the first time. She shifts her hand in and watches the color shine. Max and El are both tomboys—eager to skateboard and climb trees—but there is no harm in wanting to look pretty. 

El discovers an affinity for the colors pink and yellow. She has spent so long in colorless environments, drab whites and greys of the lab, and the browns of the cabin. Putting color on her face and nails and clothes feels like wearing happy on her body. 

Holly Wheeler comes around more and more often. Mike brings her to the cabin, sometimes, or she tags along with the party. El adores her, and is more than happy to play with her. 

“My parents…don’t love each other. They don’t take care of Holly,” Mike explains, not meeting her eyes.

“Mike, I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “It’s fine, I guess. It’s not like Will’s dad or your Papa.”

El makes a face. Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean it makes it okay. At any rate, she’ll love Holly so much that it will make up for the Wheeler parents. 

This is family. Family doesn’t have to be parents and children and siblings. Family can be friends. Family can be found in the woods in the rain. Family can be built in a basement with plastic millennium falcons and yoda figurines. 

Family is built as Dustin watches Star Wars with her, carefully explaining everything she doesn’t understand. Family is built as she and Lucas race each other to the top of the tree in her front yard, as Mike can’t even reach the bottom branch and Max decides to stay on the ground. Family is the group of them, shepherded by Dustin’s mother, cheering as Steve walks the stage at graduation. 

She doesn’t see Steve a lot. He mostly drives them places, but Hopper is more comfortable if he’s the one driving her. But Steve is kind. He protects them, even though El can look after herself and everyone else. But he sends her comic books and slips her leftover fries from his job at the burger place. 

When summer comes, he invites all the kids to his house for a party. El has never been swimming before. The only times she has been in the water like that was when Papa wanted her to find something. The water is not her friend.

The boys throw themselves into the water, whooping like wild creatures, and Max follows them eagerly. 

El dips a toe in, and cannot find it in herself to continue. 

Mike notices right away. “C’mon, El, come in!”

She shakes her head, struck mute. 

Mike climbs out of the pool and sits on the side. “Here, just come sit with me.” 

She sits down beside him, and hesitantly drops her feet in. Somehow, with Mike by her side, everything is less scary. 

Still, she cannot go underwater all the way, so she reads on the edge while the boys attempt to drown each other. 

Max paddles up to El. “What are you reading?” 

“Nancy Drew.”

“I like her. Is it good?”

El nods, smiling. 

Max hoists herself up next to El. “You’re pretty cool, you know? You can—” Max waves her hand vaguely in the air—“Throw stuff with your mind and shit. It’s cool.”

El smiles, cocking her head. “You’ve told me I’m cool before.”

Max shrugs, looking away at the splashing boys. “I know. But people can always stand to hear how cool they are.”

El nods. 

“Hey, I have some books at my house. Would you like to borrow them sometime?”

El’s face splits into a grin and she nods enthusiastically. 

“Okay. I’ll bring ‘em the next time we hang out, kay?”

“Okay.” El returns to her book, and Max swims away to climb on Lucas’s shoulders so they can absolutely smoke Mike and Will in a chicken fight. 

On the fourth of July, the Byers have a massive party at their house. Steve and Jonathan carefully set up fireworks, and all the kids run wild with sparklers. Holly giggles as Dustin pretends to chase her, and Lucas gives Max a piggyback ride as she laughs. Jonathan takes picture after picture, capturing each smile. Joyce and Mrs. Wheeler and Mrs. Henderson and Mrs. Sinclair have laid out a fantastic spread of food, and Mr. Sinclair is helping Hopper at the grill. 

El eats watermelon so juicy it dribbles down her chin, and when Mike kisses her cheek he makes a face at the stickiness. There are fresh blueberries by the handful, and blackberry cobbler, and hand-churched ice cream. El is happy and full, feeling like there is sunshine inside of her. 

The name on her adoption certificate is Jane Eleanor Hopper. Eleven was just too weird of a middle name to slide past the government, so Eleanor it was. But she knows, just as they all do, that it’s Eleven, El, and sometimes, Ellie. 

In her reading, she found a quote. _A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet._ It’s in a book from Nancy, a book of poems. El likes poems, likes the way the words flow together and mean more than one thing and tell a story in completely different ways every time. But the quote—by any other name. What’s in a name, really? What does it matter? 

El knows. She has had many names. 

A name is important. It tells you who you are, _whose_ you are. It gives identity. It gives belonging. And perhaps there is nothing sweeter in this world than someone whom you love calling your name. 

But that, of course, means you must also understand love.

So this is love. Love is being surrounding by people who fill your heart with joy. Love is holding on to one another through the hard times and refusing to let go. Hard times come in all shapes and sizes—monsters in the dark, monsters in the head. Mike has depression. Will and El have PTSD. Max’s monster calls himself her brother. But they stick together, through it all, and that is love. 

Love is for what is hers. Her people, her friends, her father, her Mike. 

And there is also joy. Joy is what resides inside of her, at knowing she is surrounded by love.

She still thinks of her sister, of Kali. She thinks about trying to find her, and decides that she’s not quite ready. Not yet. The time will come. And when it does, she’ll be ready to welcome her with open arms.

On the nightstand by her bed is a picture that Jonathan took of the whole party. They all have a copy, but she keeps hers there, next to the mixtape Mike made her for Christmas, and the portrait Will drew. On her wrist is a blue hair tie Hopper gave her, telling her it could only belong to his daughter. It means something to him, she knows. 

Fall comes back, and El watches the leaves change in blazing color. The rest of the Party goes back to school, but she is not quite ready for that. Not yet. Next year, maybe, but until then, Joyce and Hopper will trade off homeschooling her for another year. 

Joyce and Will and sometimes Jonathan come by for dinner at least once a week, and Mike comes by every day after school. Sometimes they bike through town, with El clinging to his waist. Sometimes they stay at her house. What matters is that they are together. 

Her name is Jane Eleanor “El” Hopper, and one day it will be Jane Eleanor “El” Wheeler. She knows that’s the truth, and it will happen just like a story in a book or on TV. 

This is her name. This is who she is. She is loved, and she is joyful. 

On this sunny fall day, Mike comes pounding up the porch steps, knocks on the door. She opens it, presenting her forehead to be kissed. 

“El!” he says, simply happy because she is here and real and he loves her. 

Warmth rises in her chest. There truly is nothing more beautiful than the sound of someone you love calling your name.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew! And so I've completed the series! It's been a journey, folks.
> 
> If this is the first one you've read, please go read them all! If you've been with me since the beginning, thank you! This one's for you. 
> 
> Give me a shout on tumblr @stillusesapencil!
> 
> Title quote/end quote is from the Tale of Desperaux.


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